The study examines the relationship between personality and work performance in sales roles. Beginning with an examination of the major trait personality models and instruments it examines the reasons that personality questionnaires have had relatively little success in predicting work performance. The review concludes that instruments based on the behaviours which distinguish between the most effective and less effective sales performers are likely to be better predictors of work behaviour than traditional measures of a broader model of personality. A detailed work analysis was conducted based with sales staff, their managers, directors and customers. To this was added documentary evidence from job advertisements, training manuals and a sales diary. Following open coding the 3565 behaviours which emerged were subjected to a process of reduction to produce two pilot behavioural questionnaires with a total of 717 questionnaire items. Detailed information about each item was gathered, including the relationship between item response and work performance, the capacity to discriminate sales staff from other groups and the relative responses of gender, age and ethnicity groups. A second pilot was conducted with studies of concurrent and construct validity being carried out and the data was subjected to oblique factor analysis and cluster analysis techniques. A final instrument of 153 items was prepared, measuring a new hierarchical model of personality in sales roles comprised of 8 lower order factors, three higher order factors and a general factor. The new instrument also measured attempts to distort the profiles given. The new instrument was completed by sales staff from a number of sales roles and measures of their work performance were also taken. Construct validity studies were undertaken with Eysenck's Personality Questionnaire, The Manchester Personality Questionnaire and the NEO-PI questionnaire. In addition the instrument was completed by two samples of none-sales staff and measures of their work performance and career advancement were taken. It was found that in general the work behaviour based instrument was no more successful than broader personality questionnaire at predicting work success. The possible reasons for these findings, for example criterion contamination and an incomplete sampling of behaviours or routes are discussed.The performance of a number of groups on the instrument are also reported on the basis of gender, ethnicity, age and first language.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:310708 |
| Date | January 2000 |
| Creators | Jones, Peter Charles |
| Publisher | University of Wolverhampton |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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